Scientists at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have discovered a lost spacecraft that has been orbiting the moon for quite some time.
The men and women over at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent a beam of microwaves to the moon utilizing Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. After the waves bounced back and scientists recorded their research, they detected that two spacecraft were in lunar orbit over two-hundred-thousand miles away. One of the spacecraft was a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which was sent out by NASA.
The other spacecraft, however, was a long lost Indian spacecraft Chandarayaan-1 spacecraft that was launched to the moon in 2008. The ship was last heard from in 2009 and the scientists at NASA utilized the same process they used to find their LRO to find this ship. NASA released a statement on the matter, saying:
“We have been able to detect NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [LRO] and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar. Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission’s navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located. Finding India’s Chandrayaan-1 required a bit more detective work because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August of 2009.”
